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Working families continue to feel the wrath of high prices

While the Bush Administration has found difficulty in uttering the word “recession,” figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics report for February confirms that a recession is upon is and that it likely started in December.

Total and private sector job gains and losses have worsened sharply each month since last October with job losses in February the worst since the March 2003 – the start of the military invasion of Iraq.

The private sector lost a net of 14,000 jobs in December, 26,000 jobs in January, and another 101,000 jobs in February. Virtually every industry capable of exporting that faces cut-throat import competition or routine offshore out-sourcing, continues to lose jobs at an accelerating rate.

If it weren’t for state and local governments bolstering job numbers with additions to their health care, education and prison bureaucracies, the employment situation would appear to be in a free fall. The 97,000 jobs added by state/local governments over the past three months reduced the private sector’s loss of 141,000 jobs to a total loss of “just” 44,000.

With unemployment rising, it won’t be long before state and local governments have to curtail their hiring practices.

Adding to miseries of working families is a continual rise in prices which are expected to be in the .03% range which will drop real weekly wages down -1.4% for the 12 month period from January 2007 to January 2008.

With the unprecedented trade deficits/production shortfalls in manufacturing, the total hours worked in manufacturing over the past 75 months has actually declined by -9.4%. The only other 75 month decline on record is -2.1% in the severe double-dip 1980-’82 recessions.